


Bodies Seen Through Telescopes

by WithoutAQualmOfConscience



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alien Gender/Sexuality, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Space, Dubious Consent, Dubious Science, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Genderqueer Character, M/M, Multi, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-24 01:12:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/933361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WithoutAQualmOfConscience/pseuds/WithoutAQualmOfConscience
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After returning to his human body, Eren worries about aspects of his anatomy. As it would happen, Levi and Co are curious (amidst other things) as well. (Trans Levi, Gender Neutral Pronouns Hanji, Total Apathy Towards Official Name Spellings)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bodies Seen Through Telescopes

**Author's Note:**

> The truly important questions of this series are: do titan shifters have human junk, and, how does the economy work?

Of course, there are mutations worse than this. Around Tau Ceti, humans begin to grow hard black scales on their lungs. Near Wolf 359, most warm-blooded carbon based life-forms find their circulatory systems slowly rising to the outside of their skins. In the vicinity of 61 Cygni, there are rumors that men slowly become something not quite rock, not quite snail, not quite viscous and rapidly hardening maddened organ piles, but something close. Somewhere beyond these knows, beyond Pluto and whatever blackness edges in slowly upon it, there are diseases and misfortunes far greater. And yet, to be returned to human form and desperately searching for pieces, wondering where bits went…. And yet Eren is 15 years old and wonders, frantically, directly in the face of the circumstances, while chained in a dungeon, what the hell has happened to his cock.

-

“His teeth,” Hanji says, holding them up to the dim gas-light, “They’re not warm.”

“They’re teeth,” Levi says without looking up, continuing to polish his gear in slow, steady motions. “Of course they’re not hot, weirdo. They’ve been out of his mouth for hours. Aren’t you supposed to be good at science?”

“You’re the weirdo,” Hanji replies, completely unflustered, “It’s of scientific relevance.” They set the teeth down on a handkerchief and smile. “I think next time we get our hands on a titan, we pull a tooth out.”

“Put your arm that close to its mouth. I don’t see what can go wrong,” Levi says, “See if you grow your limbs back same as that kid, because we sure as hell can’t transport you off planet for a nice robot arm right now.”

“They could make one here!” Hanji insists, scooting their chair closer to the bed, knees touching Levi’s, “Out of 3D gear!”

“The last thing you need is for your arm to shoot grapple hooks,” Erwin adds from the bed, setting his book aside. “What is this about Jeagar’s teeth, now?”

“They’re not warm,” Hanji says, “And they haven’t fallen apart. I have them, see?”

“You’re the one with glasses, dummy,” Levi says, setting his gear aside neatly and returning to bed to rest beside Erwin. “Come here.”

Hanji joins them, pulls their knees up to their chest and lets Erwin wrap his arm around their shoulder, rest his face against their back. “He doesn’t have to be in titan form to regenerate.”

“So?” Levi asks, adjusting himself to lay with his head in Erwin’s lap. “Presumably there’s a pre-transformation stage activated by physical pain. Hell, maybe it was a baby tooth.” He doesn’t laugh at his own joke, but Erwin manages a low chuckle.

“Maybe you’re right,” Hanji says, leaning over to kiss Levi’s forehead. “But also maybe we can use this information to find the self-replicating tissue genes in a non-titan and export said information to the general public.”

“They wouldn’t understand it,” Levi says, “You’d have to put that information into human language.”

“Well,” Hanji says, looking at the teeth again, “That’s what you two are here for.”

-

He grows back. _It_ grows back. With a sigh of relief, bruised and bloodied and exhausted, Eren lies on his prisoner’s bed and puts one hand in his mouth and one on his groin and his whole body shakes with fear. He can feel the micro-tears in his shoulders, the sinewy splinters and frayed edges, slowly beginning to re-form. Like his body is made alternatively of rock and wet cornstarch. There are stories about people who stay on starships for too long, especially the older ones with inconsistently simulated gravity, whose bones turn to jelly. When they touch down, especially on Jupiter but even sometimes on Mars or Mercury, they collapse into a heap and can’t move. They’re as useless out of the dark as Eren feels without his 3D gear, without his body. And now he feels intensely aware of his blood, viscous and moving through his loins slowly but surely. He is hesitantly touching his thighs when he is interrupted with a start.

“What the hell are you doing, kid?”

Eren sits up, wincing sharply. “Who is it?”

“Who do you think, dumbass?” Levi is standing outside the bars, and behind him, Erwin and the bespectacled Hanji with a wide, manic grin and a notorious and startlingly high kill record, for being from Earth.

“It- I-” Eren stammers frantically, trying to find words that aren’t _I morphed out of being a titan and my dick had vanished_. He settles on, “I wasn’t sure if I was going to be all right after the transformation. Never having done it before, after all.”

“How are your teeth feeling?” Hanji asks cheerfully. “How would you feel about having other teeth knocked out?”

Eren hesitates. “Not…. Good?”

“Well that’s too bad,” Hanji says in the same chipper tone, rocking back and forth slightly. Eren can’t tell if it’s a threat or not.

“We’re entrusting you with Levi,” Erwin says, unlocking the cell door. “You’ll accompany the Special Operations Squad under his command.”

“Are- Wait,” Eren can only stare at the three of them, lit from behind by the gas lamps, a trio of angels with wavering halos and expectant eyes. When Eren was growing up, Armin’s grandparents used to pray to their pacifist God, the peace-loving deity who, in theory, supported the original settlement on Titan. But there are other versions of eternity and some of them wear faces, Eren thinks, which probably resemble Levi’s. “Really?”

“Yes,” Levi says, “And if you so much as take a half step out of line, I’m letting Hanji biopsy every part of your useless carcass.”

For a moment, Eren looks to Erwin for help, but the man only smiles the way an executioner might. “Yes,” Eren says, “Sir.”

-

Levi is watching the boy with his own eyes and with the eyes of others. Watching him eat dinner in fear through Erd’s observations, watching him make a mess of the cleaning through Petra, watching him try to act tough through Auruo. Levi is watching the boy, observing his flesh, paying curiously close attention to the ripple of muscle when the boy’s shirt presses close to his back, reveals a hint of freckled shoulders as it falls to the side. Levi is watching the boy with something close to lust but he hesitates to call it this, to attribute these feelings to anything other than the familiar desire to put an end to problems by hand.

“You’re as curious as I am,” Hanji says one evening as they lay next to Levi, shirtless and sweating, still trailing their fingers over the outside of Levi’s hips, still grinding their own slightly and Levi knows that soon he will return to nestle his head against the softness of their inner thigh and rest his mouth against the sweetness of their flesh.

“About?”

“Eren.” Hanji rolls onto their back and draws their knees up to their chest, rocking on their back like an overturned beetle, face scrunched into a cheerful contemplation. “I can tell. You know what I spend time thinking about?”

“You spend time thinking about everything.”

“Not everything. But I’m thinking about sex.”

“Then I didn’t do a good enough job,” Levi replies, “Come here.” He sits up and kisses the tops of Hanji’s knees, preparing to spread their legs apart.

“Not us, silly,” Hanji replies, but still wraps their legs around Levi’s waist. “The titans.”

“You’re not having sex with a titan. They don’t even have anything to offer.”

“I know,” Hanji says, “That’s what I’m thinking about. Do you think Eren has anything to offer? Apart from cells and tissue and his brain when or if he dies.”

Levi shrugs. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Well,” Hanji sits up and pushes Levi back, mounts themself on top of him, “You should find out.”

-

The 3D gear comes from Mars, mostly, where it’s used for recreational purposes, specifically rock climbing. The enormous red towers of rocks left over from the developments and terraforming are easily scaled if grappling hooks are involved. The metals come primarily from Earth, though some of it can be harvested on site at the Martian factories. But the 3D gear comes to Titan through smugglers. Anymore, everything comes to Titan through smugglers. Respectable freight ships hesitate to touch down and risk attracting the nature.

There has actually been discussion in the Universal Parliament regarding the usefulness of Titan as a whole, debating if starving out tens of thousands of people by blockade is more or less cruel than allowing them to be eaten by the local monsters (and it’s such a shame, those monsters, those unspeaking purely aggressive alien lifeforms so unlike the latest edition to the Parliament, the Xenogans, who are so polite in their monstrosity). There is more serious discussion about if prisoners ought to be sent to Titan as punishment, but it would be a damn shame to throw convicts at a struggling and half-eaten settlement that was originally a religious encampment. Just not very Christian, as it were.

But smugglers, of course, don’t give three damns or a penny about what the Parliament says, and so the 3D gear comes from Mars, directly to the military police, who, it’s rumored, also take the occasional alien girl and, it’s confirmed, always take a fair supply of liquor as well. And from the military police, some unlucky sap who draws the short stick gets to carry the gear to the Recon Corps.

Eren greets them at the door of the base, helps to lift the heavy canisters into safety. Levi watches with what could easily be mistaken for bored contempt. When the military police loser mounts his horse and gallops away as quickly as possible, as though Eren will spontaneously transform, Levi approaches the boy. “We need to talk.”

“Yes, sir,” Eren says quickly. He’s obedient, at least.

“Follow me.”

Hanji is waiting in their bedroom, a row of what look like medical instruments on the bedside table. The room, is, of course, spotless. Levi’s. “Hello, Eren!” Hanji says cheerfully. “How are you today?”

“Fine, thank you, s- m- fine.” Eren says, unsure of how to address this particular superior.

“We’re going to make out with you now,” Hanji continues. “For science.”

“What?”

“For science,” Hanji repeats. “And for other reasons. Because we’re curious.”

“What are you talking about?” Eren asks, looking at the door only to see that it’s locked and Levi is standing guard, already taking his shirt off, displaying startlingly well-defined abs and a pair of long surgical scars that bisect his chest. “Sir?”

“Listen to your superior,” Levi says.

Hanji shakes their head. “It really it science. I’m sure you’re aware that when you’re a titan, you haven’t got any clothes on, right?”

“Well, I mean, yes,” Eren says, considering it for a moment. It only makes sense.

“And,” Hanji continues, “That you happen not to have a particular area of anatomy as a titan?”

Eren goes pale. He can feel his blood drop to the bottom of his body, his feet suddenly feeling too large for his shoes, his heart pounding in his neck. “I… Yes.”

Levi approaches now and unceremoniously grabs Eren’s crotch. The boy yelps in protest and pain but cannot move away. “Well, Hanji,” Levi says, “it looks like he’s got something now. Undress, Jeagar.”

For a moment, Eren imagines Mikasa in a similar situation. Mikasa, forced to strip before a commanding officer and reveal the stark wires on her back, the metal of her hips and the silicone of her breasts. She would kill them without hesitation. Nobody sees Mikasa naked except by accident or unspeakable circumstances. “Yes, sir,” Eren says finally, because he is not Mikasa, he has no pre-programmed response to a situation like this. And he closes his eyes, undresses.

There is a silence in the air but only for a second, and then there is the sound of frantic scribbling. Eren opens his eyes again to see Hanji taking notes furiously. Levi is standing in front of him, pushing him back into the bed, and Eren obeys because there is nothing else to do and because Levi is wearing only tight-fitting boxer briefs and Eren is too stunned and, it occurs to him through the haze of fear, slightly aroused, to do anything about it.

“I think what we can assume,” Hanji is saying as Levi is putting his mouth around Eren’s cock – _thank god it’s back oh thank_ God—and running his tongue up the length, “Is that when the body is absorbed into the titan during transformation, elements of it are lost at time of return to human form. Does this align with your experiences, Eren?”

Eren’s experiences. Once with Armin when they were young, too frightened to maintain themselves, melting in each other’s hands. Once with Mikasa before they were siblings and perhaps after that but neither of them speak of it. Her lips were cold and her mouth was only for show. She could fit only the tip of his dick in before it ran into the impasse of her manufacturing but she had soft breasts and they were not related, not really, and she wasn’t even human. Many times on his own, with his own hands, thinking of the various trainees, imagining Reiner’s pure strength or Marco’s delicate coldness so much like Mikasa’s and so much different (for Mikasa was manufactured on Jupiter and shipped as an “infant” and Marco had sprung fully formed from an assembly line on Neptune).

“He’s busy,” Levi is saying, pulling Eren back into his body, “Interrogate him afterwards.”

And Levi is pulling off his shorts and now Eren is staring and can’t stop and wants to say something polite and deferential but can only focus on the distinct _lack_ between Levi’s own legs. As thickly hairy as the trail from Levi’s stomach to his crotch but not the sort of genitals Eren was ever taught men could have. “Sir?” Eren manages.

“Please,” Levi snorts, “Did you think every man had the same mutant junk as you do? At least mine stays this way.” Hanji laughs in the background and Eren must consider that there are probably stranger things that could have happened in this situation.

When Levi presses close to him, he kisses back. There are, after all, a variety of bodies in space.


End file.
